New Era Club Meeting - Oulton Park - April 2005

Prior to travelling all the way from Cheshire to Brands Hatch for the first round of the Supermono Championship I felt it would be worthwhile doing a local meeting on the new Yamaha. Having had a successful test at Mallory I couldn’t wait to race the bike so the Club meeting that New Era were running just down the road at Oulton Park seemed to good to miss. I knew there wouldn’t be many other single cylinder machines out at the meeting but Oulton is such a fantastic circuit I was happy just to be racing there!!!

I went to the track on the Saturday morning and was the first through scruitineering and had signed on before most people were out of their vans and caravans. I took the wheels out of the bike to have the slicks put on, I didn’t really expect to be using slicks in early April to be honest so Id left the bike on the intermediates from the recent test at Mallory, but the weather was looking promising…It was dry…which is almost unheard of for Oulton, so I took the chance whilst it was quiet to get them changed, I also changed the rear sprocket back to a 38 because it would easily over rev around Oulton with Mallory gearing on.

The morning just got warmer and timed practice was held in bright sunshine, I set of steady as Id not ridden Oulton with the new chicane at Knickerbrook, but as the session went on I picked up the pace and eventually qualified 14th on the grid for a race with all sorts of bikes including 400’s, Hornet’s, CB 500’s, TZ’s & a couple of other singles

There was little to do on the bike between practice and the first race but being local lots of friends came along to watch so I was kept busy especially as quite a few hadn’t been to a bike meeting before.

I took my grid position for the first 6-lap race. Once the first lap shuffling had settled down I found myself at the back of quite a train of bikes. I took a while to get into the swing of it but once I’d got into my rhythm I began to pick them off passing at least two bikes on every lap, until I worked my way up to 8th place by the end of the race. I also improved my lap time from timed practice. However the bike wasn’t going into top gear very well, which didn’t show up when I was testing at Mallory. Also my foot was slipping off the left foot peg, which I first thought might be oil until I looked down to see that it was clean.

Between races we stripped down the gear change linkages and repositioned them so it made a more positive push on the gearbox but all the linkages were worn and would need renewing prior to going to Brands Hatch the following weekend. Also the foot peg rubber had come loose causing my foot to slip!!

In the second race I had a much better start but got stuck behind a 600 Hornet who was difficult to pass and holding me up in the corners, I followed him for almost 3 laps before eventually getting past on the exit of Old Hall corner, I pulled away and caught and passed another rider but found myself a long way off anybody else with no real reason to push hard and catch them, I finished 10th. The mods to the gear change improved things but it wasn’t perfect and I definitely needed to fit new foot pegs.

I thoroughly enjoyed the day and was glad I made the decision to enter, the few minor problems that showed up meant that I could get things fixed before going to the important Supermono Championship meeting. I also picked up a first place trophy for the single cylinder class which is a nice start to the year!! 

New Era Motorcycle Club website www.neweramcc.org